Morning. So, so last week and and this week in the Gospel of John, uh Jesus is talking in categories that are not that comfortable for us because he’s talking about he’s talking about the world and his followers. He’s talking about people who are in and people who are out, insiders, outsiders. Never comfortable for us to think in those categories. But Jesus consistently has been saying that throughout the gospel of John. He’s saying if you believe in me, you’ll be saved. If you don’t believe in me, he says in John 3, you stand condemned already. So it’s always this it’s this tension that we feel in this particularly in these passages in John where he’s talking to his disciples the night he gets arrested of those who are in and those who are out. Of course, Jesus welcomes all who will come to him in faith, but those who won’t come to him in faith, they end up on the outside looking in. So, last week we looked at Jesus’ words concerning how his uh followers were to experience the hostility of the world. And we said the world, the world, as Jesus talks about it, is a kind of code term or shorthand for all the people and philosophies and values and systems that operate outside the authority of God and his word. And the world is not to be uh loved by followers of Christ. We’re not to be infatuated, conformed to it. Friendship with the world, James says, is hatred toward God. And at times in church history, uh Christians have tried to spell out various ideas of what being conformed to the world meant. And usually they they got quite superficial about things like that, saying, “Oh, no, the world would mean going to movies and wearing makeup and dancing and drinking and smoking and gambling and long hair on men and playing cards.” And maybe for some rules like that were helpful in their sanctification, and helping them live more holy lives. And maybe maybe it is our generation that’s become rather insensitive to the way the world kind of crowds in on us and tries to make us its own. But in our passage this morning, Jesus takes aim again at the world, but his critique runs far deeper than just participating in things like dancing and drinking. His critique extends to really big existential worldview matters and how the world gets things wrong in three areas. The areas of sin, areas of righteousness, and the areas of judgment. The world is confident that it knows something about such things. that it it has sin and righteousness and judgment figured out. But Jesus says the world really doesn’t have a clue and it needs to be convicted. It needs to be put on trial so that it might see how skewed its thinking really is. And so to those who are held captive so that those who are held captive by the world might uh be released and come to faith and trust in Jesus Christ, their savior, the son of God. So, in CS Lewis’s uh three volume work of fiction uh the space trilogy, there’s a man named Ransom, and he has his first encounter with beings who are called LDLs. And these are beings from deep heaven who are now beginning their descent to Earth. So, he’s inside his quarters and Ransom suddenly sees a very faint rod or pillar of light and it’s spinning at a speed he just can’t fathom. and trying to describe it later. He says there were two odd characteristics about that LDL. One was that it had a color that he was unable to express and unable to recall. And two, it had to do with the angle of that pillar of light. In Ransom’s words, it was not at right angles to the floor. But as soon as I’ve said this, I hasten to add that this way of putting it is kind of a later reconstruction. And what one actually felt at that moment was that that column of light was vertical, but the floor was not horizontal. The whole room seemed to have healed over as if it were were on board ship. The impression, however, produced was that this creature had reference to some horizontal to some whole system of directions based outside the Earth and that its mere presence imposed that alien system on me and abolished the terrestrial horizontal. And what CS Lewis is trying to have Ransom describe is that he was perceiving for the first time in his life true vertical, something that actually stood straight and showed that the world itself was off by several degrees. The world was weirdly angled, but that Eld had access to a system of directions based outside the Earth revealed the true vertical and Ransom had never before experienced it and it kind of unnerved him. He says, “I felt sure that the creature was what we call good, but I wasn’t sure whether I liked goodness so much as I had supposed.” Excuse me. This is a very terrible experience. As long as what you’re afraid of is something evil, you may still hope that the good may come to your rescue. But suppose you struggle through to the good and find that it also is dreadful. Here at last was a bit of the world from beyond the world, which I’d always suppose that I loved and desired. It was breaking through and appearing to my senses and I didn’t like it. I wanted it to go away. I wanted every possible distance and gulf and curtain blanket and barrier placed between it and me. This morning in Jesus’ words, we have this supremely good Holy Spirit who to us believers is presented on very friendly terms as our advocate, our counselor, our comforter, our helper. But at the start of our passage, the spirit also comes to confront and accuse and convict the world of how skewed, how off it really is. How much is people need to repent and change and begin to be realigned with something that’s truly vertical. Now, the goodness of the Holy Spirit might prove to be a terrible presence to those who are experiencing and seeing true vertical for the first time. And it was in that upper room with his 11 closest followers that Jesus began speaking first about the promise of the Holy Spirit. And from chapter 14 through the end of our passage this morning, there are five of what are known as the pariclete passages in the Gospel of John. And pariclete is just the Greek word that Jesus used for the Holy Spirit translated as counselor, helper, comforter. When we looked at it first in John uh 14, we said advocate is probably the closest or the best English translation for that word pariclete. Our advocate is one who comes along beside us. He represents us in court. He defends us against our accuser. He guides us into truth. And more of that ministry of the advocate comes through at the end of our passage today. But before that, that same one who defends us in court shifts position and he puts on the robes of the prosecuting attorney. And it’s not us who are on trial. It’s the world that’s on trial. And the prosecuting attorney begins poking holes in the world’s case and the world’s beliefs concerning three of the most important things in the universe. So here are Jesus’ words to his disciples. Now I’m going to him who sent me. None of you ask me where are you going? Because I’ve said these things, you’re filled with grief. If I tell you the truth, it’s for your good that I’m going away. Cuz unless I go away, the counselor will not come to you. But if I go, I’ll send him to you when he comes. Now, here’s the prosecuting attorney of the Holy Spirit. He will convict the world of guilt in regard to sin and righteousness and judgment. In regard to sin because men do not believe in me. In regard to righteousness because I’m going to the Father where you can see me no longer. and in regard to judgment because the prince of the world now stands condemned. And we’re going to look at all three of those this morning. Jesus says to everyone’s benefit that he goes away. Holy Spirit can have a worldwide influence on all of us. Jesus’ ministry was very localized in a small section of a little Middle Eastern country. Spirit can invisibly influence many lives throughout the planet at all times. And when the spirit comes, Jesus says he’ll have the role of convicting, prosecuting the world, the world. And that word convict occurs 18 times in the New Testament. And it refers to courtroom activities, cross-examining, refuting, accusing, pointing out the flaws in someone’s argument, putting defendants to shame, proving them wrong, undoing the fabric of someone’s thinking, exposing their guilt. And where the prosecution of the Holy Spirit differs from the Edmonton courthouse or the kind of things we face in court is that the Holy Spirit, he’s not out just to win his case, but to reach deeply into the heart and conscience of the accused and bring them to repentance. That’s his goal. So let’s see now how the Holy Spirit acts as prosecuting attorney. Jesus says he’ll come, he’ll first he’ll convict the world of guilt in regard to sin. And he elaborates on that point saying in regard to sin because men do not believe in me and the world may imagine itself to be quite an expert on the subject of sin. In fact it may feel it has a lot more wisdom than the church has a better answer or more modern secular satisfying answer for what is wrong with the world. You know, these Christians, they just say sin is what’s wrong with the world, but it’s probably bigger than that. And they think maybe it’s politics is the big thing that’s wrong with the world, or climate change, or animal testing or racism or intolerance or failure to recycle, you know, it’s really whatever people think is the biggest problem in the world. But to say sin is the real problem sounds to many people that’s archaic. That’s preodern. That’s kind of a helpless way of thinking. To that, Tim Keller replies, “The answer the Bible gives for why we do such heinous things is both simple and complex. The answer is sin, and many reading this may be irritated and think this is a primitive and old-fashioned analysis. My response and the Bibles is yes, of course, it’s primitive and old-fashioned because it’s true and it’s deeply worn into the entire history of the world. It’d be a terrible answer if it weren’t old-fashioned.” So by reinforcing this primitive notion of sin as being the biggest thing that’s wrong with the world, what does Jesus mean by saying uh by saying the Holy Spirit will convict the world in regard to sin because men do not believe in me. Jesus is identifying here the master sin that controls all other sins. The master sin of unbelief. If people don’t believe in Jesus, that he is who he says he is, the son of God, come down from heaven to rescue people, then of course they’ll never turn to him and want relief from their sin. And if you have any memories at all of a time in your life when you weren’t a believer and you weren’t a follower of Christ, what substitute category did you use to describe your thoughts and your words and your actions that you knew were wrong? Did you call it a slip up? Did you call it a mistake? Did you uh try to justify it? Say in that context, it was okay. It’s no worse than what everyone else does. Did you just bury it and try not to think about it and blame someone else if you could? Maybe you tried powering down your conscience through alcohol or drugs or TV or some other addiction. But all of us know that not believing in Jesus doesn’t mean our conscience is going to stop sending us notifications. And whatever we do to try to turn off those notifications demonstrates our resistance to belief in Jesus, our unwillingness to call things sin in our lives. We try to use our unbelief or people try to use their unbelief as a buffer against feeling guilt. But the Holy Spirit just doesn’t let up. He’s the prosecuting attorney. He keeps pressing home the world’s sin despite its unbelief. uh wanting our contemplation of wrongdoing to think about what our behavior is actually doing to other people to unlock that padlock of unbelief because if we’re bothered enough about our wrongdoing, it may open us up to believing in Jesus and desperate to have someone come and relieve our conscience and remove our guilt. So the Holy Spirit just keeps hammering away at the world in court, asking questions, presenting evidence, going over the facts, working so that a person might break down on the witness stand, admit guilt and and turn to Jesus and repent and and uh be desperate to have the penalty of their sin paid. So the prosecutor has the world by the throat and unbelief uh until unbelief in Jesus opens up. He keeps pressing the reality of sin in showing the need. Now, if you were out shoveling sidewalk, we’ve all been doing this, chipping the ice away in front of our homes, and a neighbor came to offer help. We might look at them and say, “Oh, thanks, but I, you know, I’m fine. I I need the exercise.” And then he goes away, and we think to ourselves, “That’s kind of insulting. What What do I look like? Some old geyser who needs help clearing their snow? I don’t need his help.” But if you were injured and your back was aching, your fingers were freezing, and every shovel full you felt like your arm was going to fall off, and your neighbor came and asked if he could help you, you might say, “Thank you very much. I don’t know what I would have done without you.” The point is, it doesn’t matter how good-hearted or sincere the offer of help is, we’re only going to respond to the degree that we feel we need the help. So, the Holy Spirit convicts of sin because the world doesn’t believe in Jesus. He wants to reverse the osmosis so that the world sees its need for help. Places faith and trust in Jesus and finds forgiveness and relief from sin. Now, the second thing the Holy Spirit comes to prove the world wrong about is righteousness. Jesus says he’ll convict the world of guilt in regard to righteousness because I’m going to the father where you can see me no longer. Now, what the world got wrong about righteousness was that it condemned Jesus as a blaspheming, demon-possessed enemy of God the Father. The world thought of Jesus as the supremely unrighteous one, and they were very glad to the unrighteous one hauled out of the city and his life swept away on a Roman cross and his body stuffed into a tomb. But the Holy Spirit just won’t have any of that nonsense. Knowing that it’s not Jesus, it’s the world itself that lacks righteousness. Jesus said in Matthew 5 in his sermon on the mount, “I tell you, unless your righteousness surpasses that of your religious leaders, your Pharisees, the teachers of the law, you’ll certainly not enter the kingdom of heaven.” Paul in Romans 10, since they did did not know the righteousness that comes from God and sought to establish their own righteousness, they didn’t submit to God’s righteousness. Paul says in Philippians 3, before he became a Christian, he was faultless when it came to legalistic righteousness, which was a false righteousness. And 1 Peter 3:18 says, “Christ died for sins once for all, the righteous for the unrighteous to bring you to God.” Which all add up to the world being nowhere near to true vertical when it comes to understanding righteousness. You know, in our time, uh, sometimes we see through people who seem to be acting out a morality or an ethic. they’re they’re publicly expressing their opinion or their values just so that they’re viewed as good people and they’re on the right side of a social issue or on the right side of history. But we suspect and and sometimes we know full well that they really aren’t living out the values that they’re they’re saying. And so we we talk about that as virtue signaling. They’re putting it on. And the prosecutor, the Holy Spirit’s job is to expose those false displays of righteousness and virtue signaling and glorify the righteousness of Jesus. Righteousness of Jesus has been vindicated by his return to the father. That’s what Jesus means by saying he’ll convict the world of guilt in regard to righteousness because I’m going to the father where you can see me no longer. See, the father wouldn’t accept Jesus in heaven if he was unrighteous. So his resurrection from the dead, his ascension into heaven is all the evidence that the Holy Spirit needs to prosecute his case against the world. And prosecute he does. You know, in Peter’s first Christian sermon ever preached in Acts chapter 2, Peter had just been freshly filled with the Holy Spirit. And he’s talking to his fellow Jews about how they murdered Jesus and how God raised him from the dead. And he says, “Therefore, let all Israel be assured of this. God has made this Jesus whom you crucified both Lord and Christ. God the Father’s exaltation of Jesus has vindicated him as the supremely righteous one. And when Peter said those words showing how false uh the Jews view of righteousness had been, we read that when they heard this, they were cut to the heart and they said, “What shall we do?” Now, if there ever was a clear case of people breaking down on the witness stand following the prosecution of the Holy Spirit, it was then on the day of Pentecost. And you and I won’t we won’t really understand true righteousness, the righteousness God demands, unless we repent of our badness, the things we know are wrong in our lives, but also repent of our goodness. We need to repent of any righteousness or any righteous acts that we use to try to justify ourselves. Isaiah 64:6 declares that all of our righteous acts, the best things we could do, are like filthy rags to God. And Romans 3 says the same thing that unless we receive by faith the righteousness from Jesus brought for us on the cross as a substitute for our sin, then the the best we can do, the very best we can do is just virtue signaling, pretending we’re something we’re not. You know, Frank Barker uh is or was a Presbyterian minister, and when he was in seminary, he was already preaching. He was preparing for ministry. He was already a very religious person. And then a chaplain led him to faith in Christ. And it began when the chaplain asked him, “Frank, why are you so anxious all the time?” And Frank said, “I don’t know. I’m really trying my best to be a good Christian.” Well, Frank, the chaplain asked, “Why would God even receive you into heaven?” Frank said, “I’m trying my best.” The chaplain then said, “Frank, Christianity is not a matter of you developing a righteousness to give to God. It’s a matter of God developing a righteousness to give to you. Where does it say that? said Frank. And the chaplain showed it to him and he got it. It happened very quickly and the truth dawned on him and his whole life was revolutionized and changed. And he began to meet with the chaplain regularly. And one day he asked him, “Why didn’t Martin Luther know about all this?” And the chaplain said, “What do you mean Martin Luther knew all about it? I got it from Martin Luther.” Well, said Frank, I took a class on Martin Luther last semester and I read his commentary on Galatians. I studied it. There was nothing about that in there. Chaplain said,”Frank, go back and read that book again.” So Frank went and he got his book and he’d gotten an A in the course and he began to read the book and he began to page through it and of course he had all these marginal notes and all these underlining in the book and he said, “Guess what? On every page, every page highlighted, underlined, there it was the gospel. What was the matter with me?” He had just somehow missed it even as he got an A in the class. Our passage teaches us that the Holy Spirit, he has to put us on the witness or the world on the witness stand. Maybe embarrass the world a bit by poking holes in their story concerning righteousness until the truth dawn and we clearly see the righteousness that Jesus is offering to us. We may not, no one likes being on the witness stand when the Holy Spirit cross-examines us. But we can’t have freedom and salvation till we give up our own ideas about righteousness and just receive by faith the righteousness that Jesus has to give us. So the Holy Spirit is a prosecutor. He says the world gets sin wrong uh by uh challenging unbelief in Jesus. World gets righteousness wrong by virtue signaling and and trusting in what proved to be nothing more than filthy rags. One other big area where the world’s offkilter and it can’t see true vertical and it’s the area of judgment. Again, Jesus says that the Holy Spirit will come. He will convict the world of guilt in regard to sin and righteousness and judgment and in regard to judgment because the prince of this world now stands condemned. So the Holy Spirit prosecutes the world knows that what it thinks about judgment is also several degrees off center. And the evidence the Holy Spirit gives for that is that the prince of this world now stands condemned. Now Jesus often made the point that the judgment of the world was pretty off base. He said to a group of learned Jews in John 7, stop judging by mere appearances and make a right judgment. Also in John 8, he said, “If I do judge, my decisions are right because I’m not alone. I stand with the father who sent me.” Jesus says, “I I have I have true vertical when I understand judgment.” John 8, Jesus judged the prince of this world, Satan. and he said he’s a liar and he’s the father of lies. So he’s the source and the headwaters of all bad judgment. But now if that false jud if that false judge is thrown out of court and he’s brought before the bar and he loses his license to practice and if that prince of this world has to go from the judge’s chair to the prisoner’s dock and stand condemned, then all the cases that he’s ruled on in the past would be reviewed and could be overturned. That’s what Jesus means when he says that the Holy Spirit will prosecute the world concerning judgment. The false judge will be removed, will stand condemned, leaving all who followed him and his unjust rulings without a leg to stand on. So the downfall of the prince leaves all who serve him suddenly aware how how far off the true vertical they are concerning justice and have been all along. You know, one thing that makes the Bible such a true and beautiful and honest and noble book for us is that true justice is done in the end and the bad guys get just what they deserve. CS Lewis once said that when he wrote books for children, he included considerable violence and these dark evil beings. But he says his point was never to plague children with haunting, disabling pathological fears or phobias. He says that himself as a child uh had terrible night terrors mostly involving giant insects and he had no desire to pass such things on to his child readers. However, he said we must realize that all children are born into a world of death and violence and wounds, adventure, heroism and cowardice, good and evil. Pointing out that in his time children were f the first generation being born at the age of the atomic bomb. So Lewis says, “Since it’s so likely that they will meet cruel enemies, let them at least have heard of brave knights and heroic courage. Otherwise, you’re making their destiny not brighter, but darker.” We do not find that violence and bloodshed in a story produces haunting dread in the minds of children. As far as that goes, I side impenitently with the human race against the modern reformer. He goes on, “Let there be wicked kings and beheadings, battles and dungeon, giants and dragons, and let villains be soundly killed.” At the end of the book, I think it possible that by confining your child to blameless stories of childlife in which nothing alarming ever happens, you would fail to vanish the terrors and would succeed in banishing all that can enoble them or make them endurable. So, it’s completely satisfying for us to know that in our world where there’s so there’s so much that’s gracious and noble and good in our world alongside so much that’s pure poisonous evil. Our world really is a battlefield of heroes and villains. But the lamb of God who sits on the throne, he conquers all his foes. Doing that, he conquers all our foes for us. Prince of the world gets what he deserves. true unccorrupt judgment will be restored forever. So as our passage concludes, that’s when the Holy Spirit takes off the robes of the prosecuting attorney. His prosecution of the world has ended. He comes back to us to sit at our side as our pariclete, our advocate, our counselor, our friend. We’ve been gi We have been given the grace to believe in Jesus. We’ve received from Jesus the righteousness he won for us on the cross. As a result, we have no fear of judgment and condemnation. And then Jesus leans over and he whispers in our ear, “I have much more to say to you, more than you can now bear. But when he, the Spirit of truth, comes, he’ll guide you into all the truth. He’ll speak not on his own. He’ll speak only what he hears. He’ll tell you what is yet to come. He’ll bring glory to me by taking from what is mine and making it known to you. All that belongs to the Father is mine. That’s why I said the spirit will take from what is mine will make it known to you. In other words, for us, the Holy Spirit brings no prosecution. He brings truth and revelation. He’ll bring glory to Jesus by continuing the great work of Jesus in our lives. He’ll be our guide. He’ll be our teacher, our revealer. And all of us who live in relationship with Jesus have that inddwelling spirit moving and guiding and teaching us inside. And all of us feel pretty inadequate in our knowledge of God in the pitiful way we’re stumbling along to serve Christ. I’m sure that’s that’s the case for all of us. But our advocate, the Holy Spirit, walks beside us, always willing to teach us and show us new things. And we don’t just have a Bible to adhere to. We have the author of the Bible, the one who breathed the words into the human authors dwelling inside us. Jesus said it’s good for them to go away. highly beneficial to us because it means the Holy Spirit has come to us to stay and we’re not alone. Let’s just uh let’s spend a couple moments in prayer and maybe a couple things you could give thanks about. Give thanks that the father allows us at least to a degree to pursue perceive the true vertical in what’s really going on in our world. And pray for wisdom, increased wisdom in rightly understanding sin and righteousness and judgment. and thank the Holy Spirit for always being willing to give us truth and revelation as we continue to grow in Christ. This is just a few moments of silent prayer for you.